The Guinness share-trading fraud was a famous British business scandal of the 1980s. It involved an attempt to manipulate the stock market on a massive scale to inflate the price of Guinness shares and thereby assist a £2.7 billion take-over bid for the Scottish drinks company Distillers. Four businessmen were convicted of criminal offences for taking part in the manipulation. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg later found that their trial violated the defendants' human rights by making improper use of statements. The scandal was discovered after testimony as part of a plea bargain by the US stock trader Ivan Boesky. Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes, the so-called "Guinness four", were charged, paid heavy fines and, with the exception of Lyons, who was suffering from ill-health, served prison sentences later reduced on appeal.
Read more about Guinness Share-trading Fraud: Crime, Principal Defendants and Sentences, Appeals, Secondary Trial, Official Report, Financial Outcomes, Final Appeals 2000–02
Famous quotes containing the word fraud:
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)